Swinhoe’s Snipe

Identification: The rarest of three Gallinago snipes in Singapore, but possibly overlooked due to difficulty in separation from Pin-tailed. From Common Snipe, most obviously differentiated by a lack of clear white trailing edge to the secondaries, shorter bill and larger-headed appearance (see that species for more differences). Apart from a series of overlapping and weakly defined separation features, only truly differentiable from Pin-tailed Snipe with a clear view of the spread tail (or measurements in the hand). On this species, only the outermost pair of tail feathers are narrow (varying from 2 to 4 mm wide), while the rest gradually increase in width towards the central feathers (giving the impression of at least two intermediate-width tail feathers outside the central few, while Pin-tailed shows one intermediate-width feather between the central tail feathers and the six to nine pin-like feathers on the outertail).